WHAT ARE THE REFERENTS OF 'HERE' AND 'THERE'?

• Authors: Vecsey Zoltan
• Languages of publication: HU

Abstracts

EN

In his famous paper Demostratives (1989), David Kaplan distinguished three components in the meaning of indexicals. The first component shows what is said in using a given indexical. This is the propositional contribution or content. The second component is identical with the referent of the indexical. The third component constrains the content in various possible contexts. He called this kind of meaning 'character'. According to Kaplan, there are two kinds of context sensitive expressions: pure indexicals and true demonstratives. Pure indexicals refer automatically, whereas true demonstratives select their referent with the help of demonstrations. Contrary to Kaplan, I argue in this paper that the expression types 'here' and 'now' belong to the group of true demonstratives. I provide arguments supporting the view that their character must contain demonstrative elements.

Keywords

EN

DEMONSTRATIVE; INDEXICAL; MEANING

Discipline

• PHILOLOGY_&_LINGUISTICS: PHILOLOGY & LINGUISTICS

• Publisher: Committee on Hungarian Linguistics, Hungarian Academy of Sciences
• Journal: Magyar Nyelvor (Hungarian Language Guardian)
• Year: 2007
• Volume: 131
• Issue: 3
• Pages: 342-347
• Document type: ARTICLE

Contributors

author

Vecsey Zoltan

• No address given; contact the journal editor

Identifiers

CEJSH db identifier

11HUAAAA090426